I'm your host, Jester. I've been an EVE Online player for about six years. One of my four mains is Ripard Teg, pictured at left. Sadly, I've succumbed to "bittervet" disease, but I'm wandering the New Eden landscape (and from time to time, the MMO landscape) in search of a cure.You can follow along, if you want...

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Pre-nerfed

Today's a good day to visit the Singularity test server, if you haven't already. Most of the changes that were put into the database, then leaked, are now up and running and ready to be played with.

Note I said "most". The new tier 3 BCs aren't in yet. Sorry. ;-)

Still, a good solid majority of the other changes are in. You can now play with T2 probe launchers, T2 gang-links, T2 siege modules, T2 triage modules, and the like, if you have the appropriate skills to do so. People are already plotting and planning the invention processes that will be needed to get those all-important first few mods onto the market as quickly as possible once the winter expansion goes live.

The first few fittings for newly-upgraded hybrid ships are also leaking out of various fora. Right now, I think I'm most intrigued by the possibilities for sniper Rokhs. Long-range Rokhs are considered so bad right now that the current best Rokh fitting out there is actually fit with 1400 arties, doing a 11k alpha or 500 DPS at 30+44km, or sniping to 112km with Tremor, doing a 6500 alpha or 300 DPS. You can occasionally spot them with Alpha fleets, where they can match Maelstrom alpha while featuring a slightly stronger tank. It's easy to say that the equivalent rail Rokh, which does more DPS but less alpha at those ranges, will only see a 10% bump in damage. But that ignores the decreased grid needed for hybrids. Virtually every Rokh fit uses RCUs, Ancillaries, or both to fit its weapons today. Many other large hybrid boats do the same. Once those low and rig slots are freed, who knows what kind of fits will come out of the woodwork?

So I think the reduced grid for hybrids is going to turn out to be the most important buff of all.

This won't help the medium rail boats very much. Most are using fitting mods, true, but most are also using 2-3 Magnetic Field Stabilizers in addition already. This will result in greater flexibility, but not much more damage. Rail Feroxes, for instance, will have more tank after the expansion, but shouldn't be doing much more DPS, and Eagles (as I've already said) won't be helped in the slightest. As for the T1s, rail Moas will continue to be unheard of. I continue to hope that medium rails will get a larger damage buff than their counterparts of other sizes. For now, the 10% on-paper damage buff will be it for medium rail boats, and it won't be enough for them to see any significant use.

Blaster boats will tell a very different story. The Deimos will benefit the most; it's very very tough to wedge Neutron Blasters onto a Deimos today. Once the winter expansion hits, it should be trivial. We'll probably see some creative Thorax fits; right now the Thorax is CPU-constrained, not grid-constrained. Still, since hybrid CPU requirements are also being lowered, I think it's quite likely we'll see Neutron Raxes become common as well. Blaster Throns won't change that much, and will mostly benefit from increased tracking. Fitting a blaster Thron today is actually pretty easy. The Vindicator and Vigilant will go from being monstrous to being terrifying. The best Vigilant fits require quite a bit of Yoga to wedge on a plate, Neutrons, and a MWD. That math will also become trivial come winter. Vigilant prices are skyrocketing as a result, approaching 300 million for a single hull.

There's also a second set of database changes on Sisi as of yesterday. The bulk of them are a bug fix. It was very clear from the start that CCP intended to buff the agility of hybrid boats, but instead, they accidentally nerfed them. This is now corrected. All ships that are primarily hybrid boats -- even the Falcon! -- are getting an agility buff. The speed buffs in the previous update are also included.

Finally, there are three other sets of changes that are also important.

First, corporation bookmarks are included! Tsubutai on Failheap was clever enough to catch this first, I believe.

On Sisi, it apparently takes 5-10 minutes for bookmarks to propogate across a corporation. It will be important to see if this is the same on Tranquility when the winter expansion hits. In wormhole ops, for instance, once your scout returns with all of the bookmarks needed for PvE ops, the process today is to copy those BMs into a can and have each pilot on the op individually pull those BMs. That takes more than 5-10 minutes today, and the idea of just propogating them as corp BMs is much, much superior. Still, faster is going to be better on this one, so hopefully CCP makes that a priority. And making the distribution of tactical BMs easier for PvP corporations, though less time-critical, will be just as important. As someone who has been bitching for corp bookmarks for quite a while now, I'm thrilled to see my personal pet issue being implemented at last! Well done, CCP!(1)

Second, I'm gonna go ahead and take credit for what's happening to the Oneiros. ;-) A couple of months ago, I posted a little thought experiment that featured a cap-stable Guardian fit that was better in the Oneiros's own role than the Oneiros itself. I concluded in that post that the Oneiros needed 200 more grid and needed to trade a mid slot for an additional low slot. And that's exactly what's happening. Maybe some ship designer in CCP read my post and felt sorry for the Oni. ;-) Incursion-runners will probably be annoyed at having to refit expensive dual-ACR2 Onis, but it'll be worth it, I think.

Finally, all four of the new tier 3 BCs are getting significantly nerfed before they even get released. All four are being reduced from Recon-quality tanks down to T1 cruiser-quality tanks. More significantly, all four are also having their mass significantly increased; this should result in speed reductions of 250-300m/s across the board. More significantly than that, all of them are also receiving large fitting nerfs. The Naga is being hit the hardest, and is losing a low slot, two role bonuses, 40 grid, and 45 CPU. It will be a "dual-bonused" ship for weapons, keeping the hybrid range bonus and the torpedo velocity bonus. That drops it to the least impressive of the four.

The Talos is second-hardest hit, losing its drone bay and its 90% web, but gaining a tracking bonus and a speed increase. CPU and grid are dropping by 40 and 50, respectively. The Oracle is also being hit hard, losing its best-in-class tracking in favor of a cap usage bonus and seeing its range bonus traded for a damage bonus. It's also losing 50 CPU. It's easy to see where these three changes are coming from: someone clearly tried out flights of the newly-buffed destroyers on these three tier 3s... and the destroyers got themselves murdered. That's clearly unacceptable, so every one of these nerfs affects the ability of these ships to track and destroy smaller targets. If these ships are a rock aimed at the scissor of capital ships, CCP obviously wants to make sure that paper still covers rock.

The Tornado is least-affected of the four, only receiving a 30 CPU nerf, which will nevertheless make fitting it much harder.

Still, nerfing these ships was the right thing to do. As I've said already, they were too scary in their initial form.

Whew! Lots of stuff going on! Again, if you haven't gotten on Sisi lately, I strongly encourage you to do so. There's a terrific Sisi Launcher Tool that makes trying out Sisi trivial on Windows. No Mac version of this yet, unfortunately, but the linked page includes instructions for manually configuring a Mac Sisi client.

Go try some of this stuff out. ;-)

(1)Two stepabout this: "I don't think this is the way CCP wanted to announce it, but oh well..." Hee.

14 comments:

"It's easy to see where these three changes are coming from: someone clearly tried out flights of the newly-buffed destroyers on these three tier 3s... and the destroyers got themselves murdered. That's clearly unacceptable, so every one of these nerfs affects the ability of these ships to track and destroy smaller targets."

♥

I was beginning to be seriously worried about my frigates, what with the talos and it's web + drones. Crisis averted *phew*

Corp Bookmarks has to be the best news here. Why did they slip this in w/o telling us? It's something we've been asking for for ages. As for the nerfs; you were right, they needed nerfed, and bringing them, and the rest of the game, closer to a balance only has me more excited.

I'd mention Hybrid changes but being a Gallente pilot thats really just a given.

Was just telling some of my buddies this morning to expect the bonuses on the Talos and Naga to change... both were well into "too good to be true" territory with the early leaks.

Now for the next built in nerf shock: the possibility that the new BCs may only have room for 4 slots of large weapons, meaning less damage output than many have speculated....like I mentioned in other comments today, the Oracle model shown in the blog only has 4 turrets per side, and the Talos model pictures make it look like it has 7 hard points, but of varying sizes....guess we'l have to wait a little longer for the full stats.

"We'll probably see some creative Thorax fits; right now the Thorax is CPU-constrained, not grid-constrained."

Really? I've had that ship benched for a while (;_;), but I distinctly remember that fitting a full rack of Neutron IIs required AWU all the way to V. And checking pyfa now, even at all-V that only leaves you 71 pg. After changes, that goes up to ~180.

"More significantly, all four are also having their mass significantly increased;"

Ah, but they're also getting inertia modifier reductions. Inertia mod * mass figures (this is relevant metric for max speed/acceleration, yes?) post changes are all very close to where they were before. What is significant is that the Talos is now the most agile (and it got another 10 m/s base speed). I am now wondering what this ship will look like with a "full nano/AB and fuck the tank) fit.

I think this'll also reduce the effect of mass addition from plates/prop mods on agility.

The hoary old tracking bonus is much less interesting than a web bonus, but it's probably for the best. Saw a guy on the forums complaining that the Talos can now be taken out by an AF. Well, yes, if you engage a frigate-sized ship with large guns you're probably about to get fucked, that's kind of the idea @_@. Tracking bonus is also more useful for overcoming the ship's own traversal, which is perfect if the idea is for them to be speed tanking BSs and above (and I think it is).

@Monster: most of the Rax fits I see are:* Ion Blasters with either a 400mm plate (with "eh" DPS), or a very thin shield tank (with monstrous DPS); or,* Electron Blasters with a 800mm plate and crappy DPS.Any of those three ways, you run out of CPU first, though granted, if you try to put an 800mm plate with Ions, you run out of MORE grid than you do CPU. ;-)

By my math, Ions + 800mm plate on a Rax will be quite easy come winter. There might even be a few amusing 1600mm plate fits.

@Anonymous, I have to agree with the possibility that these ships may be limited to four large turrets. The CCP released Art points to the fact that they were never intended to fit eight large weapons, atleast as of the date the Art was created.

Of course this does not mean that we are not going to see eight large weapons or equivalent. The community got really excited over the concept of eight weapons on the new hulls. This could mean that the art is being modified, hence the Sisi delays on these ships. It could also mean four large turrets with a role bonus doubling their effectiveness.

In short, at this point its all speculation as to what we will really get with the new BCs. All we can say for sure is that CCP's released art does not show enough hardpoints for large weapons. This points strongly in the direction of their original intent being different then players assume.

@Jester, I personally hate you for the Onieros slot layout change. To a degree, I am willing to forgive you for the other changes coming with it. Changing the slots is in my opinion is trying to turn the ship into a Guardian. That lacks imagination on so many levels.

I feel the Onieros needs to have distinct advantages in special ways over the Guardian, and visa versa. Making them more alike, or making their fleet roles/tactics identical does not accomplish that. The Scimitar is a good example of a unique logistics ship with special advantages over other choices available.

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